All About Food: Dine well, young grasshopper

Have you ever feasted on fried grasshoppers, tasted tempting termites or munched on mealworms? Does the very idea sound disgusting or, at best, unappetizing?

Well, the consequences of climate change and an expanding population may just cause you to rethink this notion. It is predicted that by the year 3000, there will be 11 billion hungry people on earth.

Eighty percent of the world’s population eats bugs. There are more than 1,000 species that are edible and around 3,000 ethnic groups practice entomophagy (the fancy term for bug munching). The Book of Leviticus permits the consumption of locusts, grasshoppers and crickets (others are considered unkosher).

The Romans ate beetle grubs reared on flour and wine. Ancient Greeks ate grasshoppers. In Australia, Aborigines enjoy witchetty bugs which taste like “nut-flavored scrambled eggs and mild mozzarella, wrapped in phyllo dough,” according to the authors of “Man Eating Bug.” In Venezuela, children roast tarantulas. It seems that Westerners have some difficulty with insects, even though bugs have been eaten throughout time. We seem to find the idea distasteful.

The fact is that we are all eating bugs, whether we like it or not. The FDA produces a handbook, which lists the acceptable levels of defects in processed foods. For example: Shredded carrots may have 800 insect fragments per 10 grams. Peanut butter is allowed to have 30 insect fragments per 100 grams. Ground cinnamon can have 400 insect fragments in 50 grams

It is known that insects are four times more efficient at converting feed to meat than cattle, which waste energy keeping warm. Ounce for ounce, many insects have the same amount of protein as beef. Fried grasshoppers have three times as much and are rich in micronutrients such as iron and zinc. They also have fewer calories and less fat.

Bugs are so distant from humans that there is little likelihood of diseases jumping species as swine flu did. Also in their favor is the fact that they are natural recyclers capable of eating old cardboard or manure.

In late 2010, a group of scientists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands published a paper concluding that, “Insects reared for human consumption produce significantly lower quantities of greenhouse gases than do cattle and pigs.”

Arnold Huis, one of the authors of the paper, had eaten termites in Africa and brought some home for the head of the department to try. He liked them, and they began a lecture series about insects as a food source; its popularity led to an insect festival that drew 20,000 people. The Insectarium in Montreal holds a bug banquet every year, as does the Natural History Museum in L.A., which includes a cooking contest.

It is no surprise that in the ever-adventurous world of foodies, chefs are getting on the bug bandwagon, albeit slowly. A few years ago, the Masters Top Chef program featured bugs in a cooking competition. The winning dish was tempura-fried crickets with sun choke-carrot puree and blood orange vinaigrette.

Chef Remi Radzepi of Noma, named “Best Restaurant in the World,” served an eight-course dinner in London at the cost of $300 a person, which featured live chilled ants, flown in from Copenhagen, on cabbage with crème fresh. The critic from Bloomberg said, “When you bite into the ants, they release the flavor of lemongrass. What you taste is light and citrus-y, in contrast to the edible soil you have just consumed.”

If you think you might like to try some bugs for dinner, you must buy them from a reputable supplier. You could eat even them from your garden if you were very well informed on which kinds are safe to eat.

If this topic is of interest to you, read the excellent book “Anything That Moves” by Dana Goodyear or “Man Eating Bug” by Faith D’Alvisio and Peter Menzel.

TERRY MARKOWITZ was in the gourmet food and catering business for 20 years. She can be reached for comments or questions at m_markowitz@cox.net.